The news about Israel has three faces - the escalating violence of the occupation, the constitutional crisis unleashed by Netanyahu’s far-right government and an economic success story that has made Israel the darling of the tech economy and an attractive partner for international players including the oil-rich Arab world. On the podcast, Cameron Abadi and I attempted to draw some of these facets together. You can listen to our conversation
Jewish Corruption in Ukraine . . . by Andrew Joyce, Ph.D.
❝. . . the present conflict is a huge distraction from the fact that, for decades, the biggest threat to Ukraine hasn’t been Russia, but financiers and speculators operating with impunity within Ukraine’s borders to exploit ethnic Ukrainians and plunder their resources.❞
Is quite obvious that the very first years would realize huge GDP growth
The question is if during the after decades, in wich slowed the immigration waves, the mean through Israeli society started to self-organize - the kibbutz - would remain feasible
As we know looking from ex post perspective, an entire society couldn't survive by kibbutz model.
"There is no doubt a settler colonial logic at work in the exploitation of the occupied territories. The settlements themselves now account for 10 percent of the Jewish population thus constituting a significant slice of the economy, which in sheer size is on a par with the celebrated high-tech sector. Meanwhile the brutal experiments in counter-insurgency and surveillance offer new opportunities for military-industrial growth in privatized security and in the technologies of repression. To add to the. bitter irony, the system is fed with outside flows of funding for the Palestinian Authority."
What is the exploitation described here? There may be occupation and conflict, but there is no resource extraction, no description of the settlements' net economic contribution - just a population contribution and defense innovations (which are probably a net cost)
The settlements are not about economic exploitation - colonial or otherwise - but ideological imperative
Every once in a while, one has the opportunity to read about a subject where one is intensely familiar. This allows a reader to evaluate the quality of a writer or a different reader. Tooze seems to be a decent analyst, however Tooze seems to employ little to no critical thinking when reading sources. I'm particularly disappointed by Tooze not pushing back on the obvious economical spins (missing the political spins is understandable). Because I'm not paid by the word, I'll just reply curly.
* The first phase... delivered its period of most rapid growth, by far... the neoliberal era has been one of relatively disappointing growth"
This is a very misleading comparison, since it's always easier to catch up. Instead, we need to look at how much the state is catching up to developed countries. Israeli caught up far more during the 90s than in the initial phase. Even in the post-GFC era Israel was closing the gap.
* "Israel today - in the much-vaunted age of globalization - is, in proportional terms, less open to the world economy than it was in the 1960s, above all because its imports were then much larger as a share of GDP. "
By this standard, a country which dismantled all local industry would be the most open of all... Instead of looking at a standard which encourages lack of development, we should be looking at stuff that actually prevented opening: A) Tariffs. B) State policy of supporting local industry. C) The Arab boycott, far more important at the time than the current boycotts. By all the relevant actual measures, Israel is far more open today.
* " By the 1970s, Israel had one of the lowest Gini coefficients in the world. "
This is true, but aside: people who actually know Israeli political economy place the critical point in 1964.
* "As Bichler and Nitzan show in gloriously seedy detail, Israel’s high-tech sector was anything but a model of “free competition”. The breakthrough of “private business” relied on state-brokered deals between satellite and cable TV groupings that operated in a highly oligopolistic fashion."
Really. Out of all things looking at the tiny TV industry? And not the abnormally high R&D expenditures? Really?
* "Within Israel itself, Rabin’s assassination and Netanyahu’s ascent to leadership signaled the rejection of the Two-State model. The collapse of the Palestinian peace process triggered the outbreak of the second Intifada in 2000"
I don't expect Tooze to notice the spin here, since the issue is political, not economical. But a really careful reader would note the missing period, and notice that the peace process actually unraveled in the Barak period. Pointing out the actual reasons the process failed would be extremely problematic for the Israeli Left, so the authors which Tooze uses as sources needs to go back in time and ignore what happened in the period when it actually failed (or Rabin's actual positions for that matter).
* "The settlements themselves now account for 10 percent of the Jewish population thus constituting a significant slice of the economy, which in sheer size is on a par with the celebrated high-tech sector"
Note how statistics beyond population size are skipped, because actual economic statistics tell a very different story. There's a reason why right-wing Israeli governments are willing to sign trade deals which exclude the settlements.
* Israeli FX reserve
A result of a parallel to the resource curse (the 'hi-tech curse' if you will), and not conscious strategy. The story of how the central bank wanted to control the exchange ratio and ended up with a large reserve is waiting for an economist who is not a generalist (or at least a generalist which can critically read his sources).
"The latest iteration of the policy of “economic peace” consists in a program known as “Shrinking the Conflict”. Proposed in 2018 by philosopher Micah Goodman"
Opponent of the government, and any careful reader would note the strategy involved Israeli withdrawals to increase Area B and preparing for a future Two-State solution. It's like reading an AEI policy manifest and thinking it represents Democratic party policy. There are way better sources to see what the actual government is thinking (not that Tooze would approve of their plans, but quoting an opponent is embarrassing).
When you read intelligent generalists, there's often a tell when the author has not done nearly enough homework on a particular subject. In this case it's lumping in Gaza with the West bank:
"The result is a progressive fragmentation of the Palestinian territories that inflicts poverty and misery on their 4.5 million Palestinian inhabitants (2.7 million in West Bank and 1.8 million in Gaza"
There are plenty of other obvious errors and source-bias caused exaggerations and mistakes, but lumping in Gaza with the West Bank is a sign of pretty serious ignorance of the subject.
Excellent perspective and analysis of an evolving Israel which needs to integrate in the region through trade a partnership with its neighbours as Peres suggested decades ago. Undermining the rule of law does not help trade, trust and long term “Co-Existence and Commerce” as the prophetic Sam Pisar suggested between the Soviet Union and the west in his 1970 book.
Rather than adopt the “faculty lounge” pronunciamento that Israel is a settler-colonial enterprise, one might choose to follow the historical facts.
As part of the list-WWI territorial settlement, it was the consensus of the international community that about 1% of the former Ottoman holdings in the Middle East be used to restore the Jewish people to their historical homeland who were given the right to closely settle throughout the newly delimited territory. This was the upshot of the San Remo Conference, the Lausanne Treaty, the Anglo-American Treaty and the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine of 1922.
The Armenians were the only other indigenous group that was to be similarly restored, but Turkey violently put paid to that attempt. As matters then stood, 99% of the lands would revert to the rule of the prior imperial conquerors, the Arabs.
In 1923, Britain as the Mandatory Power over Palestine unilaterally closed off the territory beyond the Jordan to Jewish immigration, in violation of the Mandate which was lacking in any real enforcement mechanism, and ultimately created the Emirate of Transjordan, today’s Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. That land amounted to 78% of the original Mandate territory - so for those who speak of “historic” Palestine, that history began precisely one century ago.
In 1947, the UN sought to avoid bloodshed upon the Mandate’s termination by proposing a second partition, specifically creating a “Jewish” and an “Arab” state. The UN referred to Judea and Samaria, as the term “West Bank” was only invented in the 1950s to obscure the link to Jewish history. In any event, the Arabs rejected this 1947 compromise and, in violation of a fundamental provision of the UN Charter, invaded the newly created State of Israel in May 1948.
As a legal matter, the Jewish people were the intended beneficiaries of the Mandate, being the only group to have been accorded “national” rights in addition to the “civil” and “religious” rights given all residents.
But the fact that Jews are involved, seems to complicate things. So I propose the following thought experiment to gauge people’s reaction.
WWIII has ended in the defeat of the US which the victors seek to weaken through dismemberment. They also decide to right an historic wrong, in this case the Trail of Tears, and restore the Cherokee to their ancestral homeland in Georgia and North Carolina where a remnant population had always existed after the large scale expulsion.
The local Georgians and North Carolinians object vociferously and violently. To smooth things over, the North Carolina territory is closed off entirely to the Cherokee. The Georgians continue to object claiming the land was always theirs, inventing a knowingly fraudulent history while claiming that the returning Cherokee are somehow not “real” Cherokee but are at best Oklahomans.
Refusing all compromise, the Georgians attack, supported by armies from North and South Carolina, Tennessee and Florida. Georgian civilians are told to remove themselves to ease the path for the invading armies. By some miracle, the Cherokee prevail and, though spending significant amounts of money on defense, manage to create a flourishing economy underpinning a boisterous democracy while its neighbors sink under strong man rule.
The Georgians’ wartime allies refuse to grant those who had fled any path to citizenship, keep them in “refugee” camps and bar them from many jobs and professions. The 20% of Georgians who remained in place benefit from the same civil and religious rights as the Cherokee.
Is the difference in outcome some non-existent statute of limitations that prohibits the Cherokee return to sovereignty? Would any part of the Cherokee Nation be Occupied Georgian Territory?
Far right means supremacy to the will of the people as opposed to deference to authoritarian elites?
Volodymyr Zelensky is an Israeli operative, the Ukrainian parliament is full of Jewish apparatchiks.
Ukraine’s Azov Regiment Visits Israel: ‘Mariupol is our Masada’ . . . https://nationalvanguard.org/2022/12/ukraines-azov-regiment-visits-israel-mariupol-is-our-masada/
Netanyahu is alt-right compared to Marxists authoritarians (yes a tautology) https://youtu.be/eJd6jvvd6QQ
Jewish Corruption in Ukraine . . . by Andrew Joyce, Ph.D.
❝. . . the present conflict is a huge distraction from the fact that, for decades, the biggest threat to Ukraine hasn’t been Russia, but financiers and speculators operating with impunity within Ukraine’s borders to exploit ethnic Ukrainians and plunder their resources.❞
https://www.theoccidentalobserver.net/2023/02/17/jewish-corruption-in-ukraine/
Man...
This is a Marxist text..
Is quite obvious that the very first years would realize huge GDP growth
The question is if during the after decades, in wich slowed the immigration waves, the mean through Israeli society started to self-organize - the kibbutz - would remain feasible
As we know looking from ex post perspective, an entire society couldn't survive by kibbutz model.
Socialism cost is too much expensive
"There is no doubt a settler colonial logic at work in the exploitation of the occupied territories. The settlements themselves now account for 10 percent of the Jewish population thus constituting a significant slice of the economy, which in sheer size is on a par with the celebrated high-tech sector. Meanwhile the brutal experiments in counter-insurgency and surveillance offer new opportunities for military-industrial growth in privatized security and in the technologies of repression. To add to the. bitter irony, the system is fed with outside flows of funding for the Palestinian Authority."
What is the exploitation described here? There may be occupation and conflict, but there is no resource extraction, no description of the settlements' net economic contribution - just a population contribution and defense innovations (which are probably a net cost)
The settlements are not about economic exploitation - colonial or otherwise - but ideological imperative
"The Occupied Territories are an open wound and the world Israel is navigating today is far more multipolar than that in the 1990s. "
Which is more a festering wound - the occupied territories or the vacated Gaza Strip?
If by multipolarity you mean China is more powerful, that hardly implies more liberal international norms
Every once in a while, one has the opportunity to read about a subject where one is intensely familiar. This allows a reader to evaluate the quality of a writer or a different reader. Tooze seems to be a decent analyst, however Tooze seems to employ little to no critical thinking when reading sources. I'm particularly disappointed by Tooze not pushing back on the obvious economical spins (missing the political spins is understandable). Because I'm not paid by the word, I'll just reply curly.
* The first phase... delivered its period of most rapid growth, by far... the neoliberal era has been one of relatively disappointing growth"
This is a very misleading comparison, since it's always easier to catch up. Instead, we need to look at how much the state is catching up to developed countries. Israeli caught up far more during the 90s than in the initial phase. Even in the post-GFC era Israel was closing the gap.
* "Israel today - in the much-vaunted age of globalization - is, in proportional terms, less open to the world economy than it was in the 1960s, above all because its imports were then much larger as a share of GDP. "
By this standard, a country which dismantled all local industry would be the most open of all... Instead of looking at a standard which encourages lack of development, we should be looking at stuff that actually prevented opening: A) Tariffs. B) State policy of supporting local industry. C) The Arab boycott, far more important at the time than the current boycotts. By all the relevant actual measures, Israel is far more open today.
* " By the 1970s, Israel had one of the lowest Gini coefficients in the world. "
This is true, but aside: people who actually know Israeli political economy place the critical point in 1964.
* "As Bichler and Nitzan show in gloriously seedy detail, Israel’s high-tech sector was anything but a model of “free competition”. The breakthrough of “private business” relied on state-brokered deals between satellite and cable TV groupings that operated in a highly oligopolistic fashion."
Really. Out of all things looking at the tiny TV industry? And not the abnormally high R&D expenditures? Really?
* "Within Israel itself, Rabin’s assassination and Netanyahu’s ascent to leadership signaled the rejection of the Two-State model. The collapse of the Palestinian peace process triggered the outbreak of the second Intifada in 2000"
I don't expect Tooze to notice the spin here, since the issue is political, not economical. But a really careful reader would note the missing period, and notice that the peace process actually unraveled in the Barak period. Pointing out the actual reasons the process failed would be extremely problematic for the Israeli Left, so the authors which Tooze uses as sources needs to go back in time and ignore what happened in the period when it actually failed (or Rabin's actual positions for that matter).
* "The settlements themselves now account for 10 percent of the Jewish population thus constituting a significant slice of the economy, which in sheer size is on a par with the celebrated high-tech sector"
Note how statistics beyond population size are skipped, because actual economic statistics tell a very different story. There's a reason why right-wing Israeli governments are willing to sign trade deals which exclude the settlements.
* Israeli FX reserve
A result of a parallel to the resource curse (the 'hi-tech curse' if you will), and not conscious strategy. The story of how the central bank wanted to control the exchange ratio and ended up with a large reserve is waiting for an economist who is not a generalist (or at least a generalist which can critically read his sources).
"The latest iteration of the policy of “economic peace” consists in a program known as “Shrinking the Conflict”. Proposed in 2018 by philosopher Micah Goodman"
Opponent of the government, and any careful reader would note the strategy involved Israeli withdrawals to increase Area B and preparing for a future Two-State solution. It's like reading an AEI policy manifest and thinking it represents Democratic party policy. There are way better sources to see what the actual government is thinking (not that Tooze would approve of their plans, but quoting an opponent is embarrassing).
When you read intelligent generalists, there's often a tell when the author has not done nearly enough homework on a particular subject. In this case it's lumping in Gaza with the West bank:
"The result is a progressive fragmentation of the Palestinian territories that inflicts poverty and misery on their 4.5 million Palestinian inhabitants (2.7 million in West Bank and 1.8 million in Gaza"
There are plenty of other obvious errors and source-bias caused exaggerations and mistakes, but lumping in Gaza with the West Bank is a sign of pretty serious ignorance of the subject.
Excellent perspective and analysis of an evolving Israel which needs to integrate in the region through trade a partnership with its neighbours as Peres suggested decades ago. Undermining the rule of law does not help trade, trust and long term “Co-Existence and Commerce” as the prophetic Sam Pisar suggested between the Soviet Union and the west in his 1970 book.
Rather than adopt the “faculty lounge” pronunciamento that Israel is a settler-colonial enterprise, one might choose to follow the historical facts.
As part of the list-WWI territorial settlement, it was the consensus of the international community that about 1% of the former Ottoman holdings in the Middle East be used to restore the Jewish people to their historical homeland who were given the right to closely settle throughout the newly delimited territory. This was the upshot of the San Remo Conference, the Lausanne Treaty, the Anglo-American Treaty and the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine of 1922.
The Armenians were the only other indigenous group that was to be similarly restored, but Turkey violently put paid to that attempt. As matters then stood, 99% of the lands would revert to the rule of the prior imperial conquerors, the Arabs.
In 1923, Britain as the Mandatory Power over Palestine unilaterally closed off the territory beyond the Jordan to Jewish immigration, in violation of the Mandate which was lacking in any real enforcement mechanism, and ultimately created the Emirate of Transjordan, today’s Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. That land amounted to 78% of the original Mandate territory - so for those who speak of “historic” Palestine, that history began precisely one century ago.
In 1947, the UN sought to avoid bloodshed upon the Mandate’s termination by proposing a second partition, specifically creating a “Jewish” and an “Arab” state. The UN referred to Judea and Samaria, as the term “West Bank” was only invented in the 1950s to obscure the link to Jewish history. In any event, the Arabs rejected this 1947 compromise and, in violation of a fundamental provision of the UN Charter, invaded the newly created State of Israel in May 1948.
As a legal matter, the Jewish people were the intended beneficiaries of the Mandate, being the only group to have been accorded “national” rights in addition to the “civil” and “religious” rights given all residents.
But the fact that Jews are involved, seems to complicate things. So I propose the following thought experiment to gauge people’s reaction.
WWIII has ended in the defeat of the US which the victors seek to weaken through dismemberment. They also decide to right an historic wrong, in this case the Trail of Tears, and restore the Cherokee to their ancestral homeland in Georgia and North Carolina where a remnant population had always existed after the large scale expulsion.
The local Georgians and North Carolinians object vociferously and violently. To smooth things over, the North Carolina territory is closed off entirely to the Cherokee. The Georgians continue to object claiming the land was always theirs, inventing a knowingly fraudulent history while claiming that the returning Cherokee are somehow not “real” Cherokee but are at best Oklahomans.
Refusing all compromise, the Georgians attack, supported by armies from North and South Carolina, Tennessee and Florida. Georgian civilians are told to remove themselves to ease the path for the invading armies. By some miracle, the Cherokee prevail and, though spending significant amounts of money on defense, manage to create a flourishing economy underpinning a boisterous democracy while its neighbors sink under strong man rule.
The Georgians’ wartime allies refuse to grant those who had fled any path to citizenship, keep them in “refugee” camps and bar them from many jobs and professions. The 20% of Georgians who remained in place benefit from the same civil and religious rights as the Cherokee.
Is the difference in outcome some non-existent statute of limitations that prohibits the Cherokee return to sovereignty? Would any part of the Cherokee Nation be Occupied Georgian Territory?
Liberal internationalism; interdependence; trade surplus; nationalism! Modern international political development?
global liberal norms,what is this?moral philosophy 101?